Most major cities (ranging from Mumbai, Chennai, Sao Paolo, Hanoi, HCM City, Beijing, Shanghai, Jakarta etc.) of the world have been hit hard over the past few years with severe flooding events.   What should policy makers do? The talk will explore options for forward-looking operational assistance to policy makers and technical specialists in the rapidly expanding cities and towns of the developing world on how best to manage the risk of floods. It will take a strategic approach, in which appropriate risk management measures are assessed, selected and integrated in a process that both informs and involves the full range of stakeholders.

Abhas Jha is Practice Manager, Urban and Disaster Risk Management (East Asia and the Pacific) within the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice for the World Bank, where he leads operations and strategy, technical quality control and risk management of one of the largest portfolios of lending, technical assistance and advisory services within the World Bank. Abhas works on cities, infrastructure finance and risk and resilience. He has been with the World Bank since 2001, working on policy reform and development finance in a variety of Middle Income Countries including China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Jamaica and Peru. He is the lead author of "Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Disasters" (2010) and "Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management" (2012) and has edited/co-edited or contributed chapters to several other publications.

Kamal Kishore is Member, National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India. Mr Kishore is one of the foremost experts on disaster management in India having worked in the area for over two decades. In his 15 year stint with the UNDP he has worked with several national and sub national governments in the Asia Pacific region. 

RSVP: Subject: "Cities and Flooding" to sci-fi@cprindia.org

CORP Seminar Series
This is the 11th in a series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminar planned by the Scaling City Institution for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative. This seminar series aims to provide a platform for discussing the experiences of the researchers and practitioners on urban sanitation. It will help strengthen the understanding of the challenges and opportunities in urban sanitation by promoting evidence-based knowledge in the sector. The space seeks to initiate discussion by sharing experiences; lessons learned from successes and failures; alternative models of sanitation technologies and service delivery models; and studies of best practices. Through these discussions, the sanitation initiative intends to build a stronger evidence base for developing policies, programmes and implementation of plans for achieving sanitized cities.